South African author made R17 million in a year using AI to write novels

A South African author wrote over 370 novels using artificial intelligence (AI) after a publisher cancelled her ghostwriting contracts to replace her with the same technology.

Coral Hart, a pseudonym under which she publishes some of her books, estimated that she made $1 million, which equates to R16.66 million, in 2026 by using AI to write.

She is also the founder of PlotProse, an artificial intelligence-powered training and publishing platform that helps AI authors tweak and publish their books.

Hart participated in a discussion on Reddit and answered questions about her decision to use AI and how she directs AI tools to write what she wants.

“I wanted to see what the potential was. Could I get six figures just by upping output and cutting paid ads? It worked,” she wrote.

She added that she used a combination of AI tools in her writing but relied primarily on Anthropic’s Claude and her own writing expertise.

Hart also emphasised that a human touch is needed to ensure there are no “AI tells that have slipped through”.

She said the first draft of an AI-generated book isn’t good and must go through several rounds of model-based developmental edits and other fixes.

The final draft must then be proofread and slightly rewritten by a human before it is ready for publication.

Hart told AFP that she started working with AI to write in February 2025. It took her three months to get used to various models and build a framework that could produce a novel.

She explained that different models have different nuances. She said ChatGPT is good at producing dialogue but struggled with prose.

Hart said Claude is good at story structure but “terrible at sex drives”, while Grok is “completely unhinged” but good at creating “spicy scenes”.

She explained that she first defines the concept, style, character details, and chapter outlines when she approaches a new story.

Over one million books sold

The AI author said that, without a detailed prompt to work from, large language models tend to produce poor-quality stories.

Hart said she could only get the models to write one paragraph at a time, and it took two or three prompts to get it right when she started.

However, she can now get these models to draft an entire novel in a single sequence, and her technique is proving successful.

One of Hart’s novels made it to Amazon’s top 100 bestsellers list. However, she explained that most of her books were targeted to specific audiences.

According to her estimates, she has sold more than one million books, which she said had earned her over $1 million (R16.66 million) since the start of 2026.

Aside from using AI to write, Hart founded PlotProse in January 2020, where she is the lead educator.

The firm offers training to AI authors who want to write and publish novels using her methods.

“PlotProse is a romance author training and publishing tools platform that helps indie authors build scalable, AI-powered publishing businesses,” Hart said.

“As a founder, I design and deliver 19+ live workshops per year, covering AI writing tools, Amazon optimisation, book marketing, cover design, and multiple income streams.”

The firm provides clients access to a suite of platforms designed to cover the author’s entire commercial years: researching, writing, launching, and selling their novels.

“Our team turns the concept you build with Coral Hart into finished, upload-ready books under our editorial process,” The Coral Hart Group says.

“Every book has a full draft of up to 50,000 words, an editorial pass, a human beta read, your cover, blurb, and Amazon metadata.”

Hart’s company is also preparing to launch software for AI authors, known as Authorythm.

“Authorythm breaks your book into the components that matter — genre, tone, tropes, heat — then guides you through five stages, from Foundation to Content,” it said.